~ How to Get Off a Weight Loss Plateau ~

Monday, October 14, 2013

... here are your three quick and dirty tips to getting off a weight loss plateau:

Plateau-Busting Tip #1: Make changes that keep your body from adapting to the demands you place upon it. Here are some examples:

If you only do cardio, add weight training.

If you only do weight training, add cardio.

If you always lift a certain weight or number, then increase intensity and decrease repetitions, or decrease intensity and increase repetitions.

Choose entirely new exercises.

Do your existing exercises in a different order.

Begin to do 30-60 second cardio bursts after each weight training set.

Choose new cardio modes, so if you bike, try running and if you run, try rowing.

Change workout time from morning to evening, or vice versa.

In other words, begin throwing your body curveballs! The rule I give to the clients who I train is to never do the same “routine” for more than 4 weeks in a row.

Plateau-Busting Tip #2: De-stress. Often, the body can be nudged off a weight loss plateau by several days of good eating and very low amounts of exercise. Though this may seem counterintuitive, an overtrained or stressed body may simply need rest. I have personally witnessed dozens of clients “magically” begin to lose weight when the normal hard exercise routine and perfect diet was replaced with an easy morning walk and a few good cheat meals.

Plateau-Busting Tip #3: Begin writing down what you eat. Sometimes you don’t know that you’re making nutritional mistakes until they’re staring you in the face. Are you really eating five pieces of tiny candy by the time you leave the office at the end of the day? That’s an extra pound of fat each month. Did you quit drinking an afternoon protein shake and replace it with a snack bag of potato chips? That can be enough to make a difference. By writing down your diet, you can go back and correlate changes to see when you stopped losing weight. Trust me; it makes the detective work much easier.

Thanks for the advice - I've been stuck on this plateau forever, and I think it's because I am overstressing my body. So I think I will try to take it easy for a week and see what happens (I'll try - but I love cycling soooo much it's hard to stay off the bike!)

Wow! What powerful advice! Thank you for this. It can be very disheartening when you think you are doing everything right but nothing seems to be happening.

I am recovering from surgery this week, so will be gentle with my exercise and healthy but not too extreme with my eating. Next week will be different, though - I'll really mix things up and shake this body off its plateau!